Emma was born and grew up in the far south of New Zealand. She lives in Cornwall. She is editor of Botanical Short Stories, an anthology of contemporary writing about plants and flowers due from The History Press in 2024. Her latest publication is Three Roads, a collection of fourteen short stories. Her novella, Travelling in the Dark, won the Hall and Woodhouse DLF Writing Prize 2019. It was long-listed for the Not the Booker Prize 2018 and selected as a Big Issue Summer Read 2018. Her short story collection The Lost of Syros was long-listed for the Edge Hill Prize 2015. She is co-editor of Cornish Short Stories: A Collection of Contemporary Cornish Writing which was shortlisted for a Holyer an Gof Award 2019. Emma's short stories have won the Sara Park Memorial Short Story Competition 2013, the Society of Authors’ Tom-Gallon Trust Award 2011, and the Society of Women Writers and Journalists’ Theodora Roscoe/Vera Brittain Award 2011. Her work has been published in literary journals in England, New Zealand and Australia.